When it comes to asking about, ahem, certain products, shoppers prefer the inhuman touch.
That’s what we found in a study of consumer habits when it comes to products that traditionally come with a degree of shame: think acne creams, diarrhea medications, adult sex toys or personal lubricants.
While brands may assume that consumers hate chatbots, our series of studies involving more than 6,000 participants found a clear pattern: When it comes to purchases that make people feel embarrassed, consumers prefer chatbots over human service representatives.
In one experiment, we asked participants to imagine buying medications for diarrhea and hay fever. They were offered two online pharmacies, one with a human pharmacist and the other with a chatbot pharmacist.
The medications were packaged identically, with the only difference being their labels for “diarrhea” or “hay fever.” More than 80% of consumers seeking treatment for diarrhea preferred a store with a clearly non-human chatbot. At caparison, only 9% of those who bought hay fever medication preferred non-human chatbots.
This is because, participants told us, they did not believe that chatbots had “minds,” that is, the ability to judge or feel.
In fact, when it comes to selling embarrassing products, making chatbots look or sound human can be counterproductive. In another study, we asked 1,500 people to imagine buying diarrhea pills online. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: an online pharmacy with a human service representative, the same store with a human-like chatbot with a profile photo and name, or the same store with a chatbot that was clearly bot-like in both its name and icon.
We then asked participants how likely they would be to seek help from the service agent. The results were clear: the willingness to interact decreased as the agent seemed more human. Interest peaked with the clearly machine-like chatbot and hit its nadir with the human service representative.
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Why is it important
As a student of marketing and consumer behavior, I know that chatbots play an increasingly important role in e-commerce. In fact, one report found that 80% of retail and e-commerce companies use AI chatbots or plan to use them in the near future.
When it comes to chatbots, companies want to answer two questions: When should they implement chatbots? And how should chatbots be designed?
Many companies may assume that the best strategy is to make bots look and sound more human, sensing that consumers don’t want to talk to machines.
But our findings show that the opposite may be true. At a time when shame looms over us, human-like chatbots can be counterproductive.
The practical conclusion is that brands should not humanize their chatbots. Sometimes the most effective bot is the one that looks and sounds like a machine.
What is not yet known
So far, we’ve looked at everyday purchases where it’s easy to imagine embarrassment, like hemorrhoid cream, anti-wrinkle cream, personal lubricant, and adult toys.
However, we believe the ideas spread more widely. For example, women getting a quote for car repair may be more self-aware, as this is a purchasing context in which women were traditionally more stigmatized. Likewise, men who purchase cosmetic products may feel judged in a category that was traditionally marketed to women.
In contexts like these, companies could deploy chatbots, especially those that sound distinctly machine-like, to reduce discomfort and provide better service. But more work is needed to test that hypothesis.
*Jianna Jin is an assistant professor of Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.
This article was originally published on The Conversation/Reuters
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